The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Solnit, Rebecca

Rebecca Solnit offers a thrilling account of the sheer breadth and scale of social, political, scientific, and cultural change over the past three quarters of a century.

In this sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit surveys a world that has changed dramatically since the year 1960. Despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility; it is an inevitability.

The changes amount to nothing less than dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. In this rising worldview, interconnection is a core idea and value. But because the transformation is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized.

While the white nationalist and authoritarian backlash drives individualism and isolation, this new world embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.

Author: Rebecca Solnit
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 03/03/2026
Pages: 160
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 7.40h x 5.10w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9798888904510

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/12/2026
Booklist 02/01/2026
Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2025

About the Author

Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books, including Orwell's Roses, Hope in the Dark, Men Explain Things to Me, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A longtime climate and human rights activist, she serves on the boards of Oil Change International and Third Act.